


the doorway

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Children, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Married Couple, Separations, cluecrewfanfics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clue Crew ficathon prompt "heaven." Nancy and Ned's children are given some sad news.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the doorway

Cole Nickerson smoothed his salt-and-pepper hair as he walked into the facility. His heart was sick, and his stomach ached. All he had managed so far was a cup of black coffee, and even that had been a struggle. Melinda had offered to come with him, but she had visited the day before, and besides, Cole's father sometimes didn't know who she was anymore.

The doctors had said it would be soon. There are other things they could do, treatments they could try, but doing so would just postpone the inevitable. Worse yet, it was clear that Cole's father didn't want them to try.

Cole supposed, as he approached the nurses' station, that he should be grateful. His mother's death eight years earlier had been a shock. She had come down with a bad cold that had turned into pneumonia; only after Cole's father had insisted, had she gone to the doctor to have herself checked out, and she had been checked into the hospital that day. Cole had stopped by to see her before he had gone to work the next morning. That night, she had fallen asleep—and she had never opened her eyes again.

They had never expected that. Their father, and Cole and his brother and sister, had always joked that their mother had nine lives, that she led a charmed life. She had made it through so many tough scrapes in her work as a detective that she had almost seemed impervious. They had never thought anything could truly hurt her—or that, when she did go, it would be in pursuit of a criminal. Something daring and a little reckless.

She had been beautiful, though, even in her mid-seventies. Her hair, reddish-gold in her youth, had turned pure white, and she had always been too busy to bother dyeing it. Their mother had always been on the go, always rushing, but no matter what she had made time for her family. She had been there at dinner to listen to their stories about school and dates and everything else, and she had come to the births of each grandchild. One of Cole's favorite photographs of his oldest son as a baby was his mother holding that tiny squirming bundle in her arms, her eyes soft as she gazed down at her own first grandson.

Cole's mother had been indefatigable; his father had been their rock. Cole couldn't remember his father reading him stories to go to sleep, but he remembered hearing his father read stories to his siblings to help _them_ go to sleep. In the mornings, his father had been the one pouring cereal or toasting bagels; at night, he had been the one who helped with homework, who was always ready to play catch or basketball or to help work on whatever crazy experiment Katie had cooked up. He had been the one with the camera at graduations and ceremonies. To their mother, living had meant never standing still for long; to their father, living had been his family.

Cole had learned what love was by watching his parents together. Ned Nickerson would embrace his wife and kiss her temple when she was working on dinner; when they relaxed on the couch, it was with his arm around her shoulders. Cole's parents had looked at each other with such love in their eyes, and even once his father was retired and his mother was just "helping" people every now and then, if Cole or his siblings came over unexpectedly and the two of them were home, they were just as likely to interrupt an embrace or some shared joke that had the two of them laughing together.

They had known each other, had been together, for so long that sometimes they didn't even need to finish each other's sentences; just a shared look would be enough to start an impassioned debate or a fit of laughter. They had grown together, and they had loved their children so well, so much, that Cole had never been able to imagine one of them without the other. Nancy had depended on Ned to keep her grounded, to be the center of her world when all else was chaos. Ned had been glad to be that rock for her; he had been totally devoted to his wife. Cole knew he still was.

He hadn't dated anyone else after their mother's passing. He had never truly recovered from it. He had seemed to age ten years overnight, and he had spent almost all his waking hours in his workshop after that. The house had been too much for him to bear. He had put together a cradle for Cole's youngest daughter, when she had announced her pregnancy; Melinda had seen how it helped him, and she had asked him to build a small bookshelf for her, to help occupy his time. Cole's nephew Charlie, the son of his younger brother Ed and Ed's partner Jack, had helped out too, bringing Ned reclaimed wood and driftwood that the two of them turned into recycled furniture. Ned had let Charlie keep all the money, too, when the furniture sold at Jack's showroom. Ned didn't care about any of it anymore, and the work gave him something to do, something to focus on. When he wasn't home, he was helping deliver meals to homebound people, or helping out at the preschool three of his great-grandchildren attended.

He had loved his wife so much that when she was gone, he couldn't stop. He still loved her. The way he showed it was everything he did for everyone else, because she wasn't there to hold while he slept or kiss good morning.

Two years earlier, Ned had gone to the hospital after a fall, and all his children had been by to see him, some with his grandchildren. Cole had come by one day to see Katie talking to one of his doctors; her blue eyes had been shining. She looked the same way her mother had, at her age.

"He says he's ready to go," Katie had told Cole, a tear slipping down her cheek. "That he just wants to be with Mom again. Oh God..."

After that, though he had recovered from the injury to his hip, Cole didn't think that sentiment had ever changed. He had become forgetful, his projects abandoned in the workshop for weeks at a time, and when he had become even thinner and more frail, Cole and Ed and Katie had debated it for a long time before they had approached him about going to an assisted living facility.

He hadn't wanted to leave. Convincing him had taken a long time, and Katie had cried several times. They had wanted him to be comfortable and safe, where he could immediately receive medical attention if he fell or was sick. Out of respect to his wishes, they had kept the house, though, and it was almost the same as it had been when he had left.

The nurse gave Cole a small smile when he approached. All three of them had been by to see their father so often that they knew most of the nurses on sight. This one was named Wendy. "How is he this morning?" Cole asked.

"He's awake, or he was. Let me page the doctor for you."

To distract himself while he waited, Cole went over his upcoming case log. After he had passed the bar exam, Cole had gone to work at the same firm that his grandfather, Carson Drew, had helped found, and both his parents had been incredibly proud of his achievements. He hadn't been home to see Melinda or his children as often as he had wanted, but now that he was older, he had allowed himself to slow down a little, to spend time on the weekends with his children and playing with his grandchildren instead of scheduling networking meetings at the golf course or showing up at fundraisers. Granted, Melinda still liked the occasional fundraiser; she liked to be on his arm, sampling champagne and hearing about the people Cole knew through work—and then taking him home at the end of the night. All three of their children had their own careers, their own places to live now; sometimes the silence after the chaos felt a little intimidating, and he and Melinda both missed their kids and loved to babysit the grandchildren.

Sometimes Cole just stopped and shook his head. Grandchildren. He felt too young to have grandchildren. Most of the time he still felt like the same eighteen-year-old kid who had driven his ten-year-old first car up to Emerson University with his parents and siblings in the car behind his, ready to take on the world, with all his life before him. When he looked at Melinda he still saw her the way she had been the first time they had seen each other, during a mixer between Omega Chi and Theta Pi, her pale blue eyes dancing, slender arms crossed, her dark-red hair up in a high ponytail.

"Mr. Nickerson? The doctor's ready for you."

Cole nodded to Wendy, shaking himself a little. The thought that his father would be gone soon—God, it had been hard enough when their mother had died. Cole knew that his father wasn't upset or disturbed by the thought of dying, far from it, but Cole still wasn't ready to let him go.

Ned's hair had thinned some and gone gray, but never white as his wife's had. He stirred a little when Cole looked at him through the window of his room's door. His arms were over the blankets covering him, and Cole knew it would be there before he ever saw its shine—the wedding ring his mother had put on his father's left ring finger over sixty years earlier.

Dr. Hendricks's face was solemn. "He appears lucid this morning," she told Cole, "and he's said several times that he wants to go home."

Cole had thought he was handling himself well, but at the doctor's words, he just felt sick with grief. "You mean..."

The doctor shook her head. "From what I can tell, he means the home he lived in before he moved to the facility. I've given him a check-up this morning, and there is no substantive change. He's still deteriorating."

Cole swallowed hard. "Would it hurt him, to take him home?"

She shook her head. "We've made him as comfortable as we can here, and his agitation might be helped—but, again, he's occasionally disoriented. He can be kept on medication that will manage his pain if you take him out of the facility, and he would need around-the-clock supervision, but again, that decision is in the family's hands."

"But what would you recommend?" Cole looked steadily into her eyes. He had inherited his parents' ability to judge character; it had served him well in his career, and in life.

"As his physician, I'd feel obligated to say that he should remain here." She paused. "But he's your father; he's tired and he wants to go home. He lives here, but it's more like surviving, and I know you and your siblings just want what's best for him. If you take him home and he suffers a heart attack or some other medical emergency, and help arrives too late to save his life, despite the DNR order—I would hate to know that any of you blamed yourselves for that. On the other hand..." She shrugged slightly. "He _is_ ready, and if you respect the DNR..."

The do not resuscitate order had been on file since the death of Cole's mother. All three of them had been disturbed by it, but Dr. Hendricks was right. He had told them several times, when he was still lucid, that he was pleased with his life, proud of his children and grandchildren, and he had no regrets.

Cole went in to see him, and his father stirred when Cole touched his hand. His dark eyes were clear, and the same color as Cole's; if Katie was almost a younger version of her mother, Cole was almost a younger version of his father. "Hey," his father murmured. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you too, Dad." Cole's jaw tightened for a moment as he tried to swallow the ache in his throat. "The nurse tells me that you've been doing okay this morning."

Ned nodded. "She's a sweet girl," he said. "But I don't want to stay here anymore. I want to go home. Will you let me go home?"

His voice cracked at the end of it, and when he coughed, Cole busied himself with pouring a glass of water from the pitcher at his bedside. He sniffled as he helped his father take a drink. "We might," he said. "I need to talk to Katie and Ed."

Ned coughed again. "They'll do what you do, Cole. They always have. Please, just take me home. I want to see our house again. I want to see her things again..."

His father was right; when Cole told Katie and Ed what their father wanted, when he said he was in favor of letting their father go home for his last days, they agreed with him. Melinda went over to the house to dust and air it out a little, to make sure it was comfortable for him, and that night, they took him home for the last time.

\--

"Ned! What are you doing?"

Cole was two, staying with Hannah while his parents took the moving truck over to their new house. Ned had been happy to buy it for her, happy that it was bright and sunlit and had plenty of space for their growing family. Nancy had only found out she was pregnant again a few weeks earlier, and Ned had taken over the majority of the box-packing responsibilities after that, insisting that she needed to take it easy.

"It's good luck, Nan."

Her blue eyes were dancing when he scooped her up and carried her over the threshold of their new house. "We're not newlyweds," she reminded him.

"Of course we are," he told her with a grin, ducking down for a kiss before he gently put her down. "We're going to be newlyweds until we've been married fifty years."

"And then what will we be? Old-weds?" She wrinkled her nose at him, but she was still grinning.

"No. Comfortable."

When they brought him home that night from the assisted living facility, Ned was the one being carried—but in a wheelchair this time. He and Nancy had redecorated several times—the hand-me-down loveseat and recliner had been threadbare and replaced years ago, sold for a few bucks at a yard sale—but much of what they had initially brought to the house remained: the barrister case his parents had given them years ago, the wedding china, the shelves of treasures and mementos from Nancy's many cases. The mantel above the fireplace was cluttered with photographs of their family: the oldest was a family portrait made on their own wedding day. So many smiling faces around them, and so many of them gone now—almost all of them, in fact. Wedding and family portraits of each of their three children, with their grandchildren, with their great-grandchildren. Ed and Jack in coordinating summer suits, Cole and Melinda with their extended family gathered around them, Katie in a long blush-pink gown and grinning into Michael's eyes.

"We have too many pictures," Nancy had told him, exasperated, when she had very nearly, accidentally, pushed one photo off the mantel while adding another one. "Too many."

"We'll never have enough," he had told her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, kissing her temple. "Look at them, Nan. Look at what we've made."

The thought of her had long been bittersweet, but tonight it only filled him with longing. She had felt so far away from him for so long, especially while he had been in that other place, and he was so lonely, so impatient to be with her again. He was angry that she had left him behind—but it was an adventure, and in all their time together, she had always been the one to greet the unknown with her eyes wide open, eager to solve another mystery. He supposed that this had turned out to be no different.

Cole, Katie, and Ed fussed over him, asking if he wanted anything, promising to visit again the next day. The nurse came in while they were still talking to him, and he told them he would be fine, that he would see them again the next day. He could see from their eyes, from the way Katie couldn't stop crying, that they weren't ready.

But being at home, after all this time—that itch under his skin had gone away, and he saw it all with new eyes again. This was the home their children grew up in, the home where they had spent nearly all of their marriage, where he had been happiest. If an echo of his wife survived, he thought it would be here.

He kissed each of his children goodbye. Cole was trying to be strong; Ned recognized the expression because it was his own. Katie—God, she looked so like her mother that the sight of her made Ned's heart ache all over again. Edmund, his father's namesake, had a square jaw but Nancy's face, his hair a lighter brown than his brother's.

Once they were gone, Ned looked up at the solidly-built African-American nurse. "My bedroom's upstairs," he said. "If you could help me into the chair."

Not so long ago, his pride would have been hurt by even asking the question—but he didn't care. The brochures for the facility had talked about dignity and independence, when to Ned it had felt like a prison. The children had meant well, and they still did. They wanted him to be safe. But they wanted him to be happy, and they just couldn't understand that, without Nancy, the light in his life had dimmed considerably.

She had been everything. She was everything. And when he crossed the threshold into his, what had been _their_ , bedroom, it was hard to believe that she wasn't just in the bathroom, combing her hair before she came to bed, or on the phone with one of their children or one of her friends. The house was so quiet without her, so terribly still, and he hadn't been able to put her perfume away, to box up her clothes for storage, to take her toothbrush out of the holder. He knew it wouldn't bring her back, and he didn't want to bring her back. She was at peace. She was in heaven. And he wanted to be with her there. He wanted to meet her mother, to join her and their parents. To stop _hurting_.

The nurse helped him into bed, unpacking the medication and supplies that had been sent home with him, before he went to the guest bedroom right beside the master, telling Ned he was just a call away. Alone for the first time in what felt like so, so long, Ned reached out and touched the other side of the bed, the side that had been his wife's for their entire life together.

He was home. He relaxed against the mattress, and he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. And though he knew it was his imagination, when he slept, he could so vividly remember the way she would sleep with her head cradled against his shoulder that he almost could feel it again.

The next day, as the nurses checked on him during their shifts, his family came by again. He saw grandchildren and great-grandchildren that he hadn't seen in a while—or maybe he had; his days at the facility had seemed to blur together, so that days felt like weeks, and some months passed like days, leaving no memory behind. Charlie came with his girlfriend, and thanked him for all he had done for him; Charlie's sister Annie came by with her partner and gave him a kiss on the cheek, telling him she loved him. Cole's oldest son was named after Ned, and he had named his own son after Ned, too. The toddler, dark-haired with bright green eyes, patted Ned's cheek as he hugged him. It seemed easier for them to see him this way, and harder; when he saw Katie, her eyes were still puffy and red from crying, and she hugged him for a very long time.

He remembered again holding her when she had been a baby, the way she had found her way through every single child-proof lock and fastener. Every year she had managed to accidentally break her glasses' frames, until she had been old enough for contact lenses; she had finished high school at sixteen, had graduated from college at nineteen. She had never backed down from anything. She was fearless, just like her mother. Seeing her like this was almost enough to break his heart.

The following day, when he had seen everyone at least one last time, the nurse took him downstairs so he could sit in his favorite recliner while she heated up some soup for him. She had turned on the small television in the kitchen to keep herself company, and he could hear it distantly without understanding any of the words, without caring. She had pulled back the curtains and opened the blinds, too, and the living room was awash in light.

When he had been in the reclining seat, Nancy would come over and cuddle up next to him, her legs curled up on her other side. He would kiss the crown of her head and she would make that soft contented noise he loved so well. They had sat like that after Ed had brought Jack home to meet them, when Katie had been distraught over the failure of her first marriage and when she had brought Michael home to meet them six months later, when Cole had called them from law school to say that he wasn't sure if he could do it, when they had returned home after visiting the hospital for the birth of their first grandchild. In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer.

He had no regrets about their life together, but he also hadn't believed that their vows would only last until they were parted.

He had known it could happen, but he hadn't _believed_. He hadn't been able to imagine a life without her. Sometimes he felt like he only needed to find a way to wake up, and she would be there beside him, her face lighting up with an easy smile.

He almost could imagine she was the one in the kitchen, heating up the soup. He almost could imagine her shoulders were warm under his outstretched arm. Almost.

After he finished as much of his lunch as he could, the nurse helped him onto the chair lift, then back into the bed. Before she left, Ned asked her to open the blinds; she raised her eyebrows, but did as he asked, and the room was flooded with light. He could see the dust motes drifting in the air; outside, children were running through sprinklers and shouting to each other, people were mowing lawns, couples were dreaming of trips to cool lakes. Their last trip to the lake, they had taken their older grandchildren, and it had been so much fun—

The last. The last. So many things had been _the last_ , and he hadn't known, hadn't known to notice it and lock it into his heart.

_Ned._

For so many years, he had so rarely been called that. _Dad_ or _Daddy_ , almost all the time. _Mr. Nickerson_ at work, and at first that had felt wrong, like someone was calling him by his father's name. To his friends, to their friends, to his wife, he had been _Ned._

The weight on his heart had felt lighter, lighter. He closed his eyes for a long moment and opened them again, and the light was golden-pale, the way it had been on their wedding day, on their honeymoon, the day their first son had been born. The day he had met her. The day it had been like his heart had begun beating for the first time. He did not understand how it had continued to beat, after her.

_Ned._

He turned his head, glancing at the doorway, and saw her there—and his eyes filled with startled, happy tears that he impatiently blinked away, cursing them for blurring his view of her. Nancy was smiling, and she looked just the same way she had when they had moved into this house. Her hair, white when she had died, was long and shining reddish-gold again, her face unwrinkled. She was young and beautiful.

He smiled at her. "I've missed you so much," he said, and his voice cracked, his chest shaking as he choked back a sob. "Oh, baby, I've missed you so much."

_I know._ She stepped into the room, and her blue eyes were fixed on his face, alight with so much love.

"Don't let this be a dream," he whispered. "Please, God, don't let this be a dream. Please. I don't want to wake up. I want to be with you again, Nan."

She came toward him and sat down on the edge of the bed. He reached for her, his hand shaking, terrified that his fingertips would pass through her, that she was insubstantial as sunlight. She reached for his hand, and her skin felt solid and warm against his, and he choked back another sob.

"It's okay," she said, her voice soft and low, just the way he remembered it. She touched his cheek and he couldn't stop staring at her, couldn't take his eyes from her face. "It's okay. Shh."

He took a deep breath, then pushed himself up—and it didn't hurt; his bones and muscles didn't creak in protest as he sat up. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, and she laughed softly as she embraced him in return.

"I've missed you so much, too," she whispered. "I've never been patient, Ned, and it's been so long..."

He buried his face against her hair. "I love you."

"I love you too." She pulled back and looked up into his eyes. "Always have. Always will."

"Don't leave me, Nan. Please don't leave me."

"I won't." She kissed his cheek. "I will never leave you again."

"Is it time?"

She nodded, and gripped his hand as she stood up. Ned stood too, and when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he was as young as she again, his hair dark, his skin taut, eyes bright. When he glanced back, he saw the still, frail body left in the bed behind him—and it wasn't _him_ anymore.

Her hand was still in his. He turned back to her and she was gazing up into his eyes expectantly, the way she always had whenever they were about to set off on a mystery together.

"Ready?"

He leaned down and kissed her gently. "For anything, with you," he murmured against her lips.

She gave him one last grin, squeezing his hand, and then they stepped through the doorway, together.


End file.
